Benjamin Disraeli

“There is no education like adversity.”

“Talk to a man about himself and he will listen for hours”

“What we anticipate seldom occurs: but what we least expect generally happens.”

“Man is only great when he acts from passion.”

“Things must be done by parties, not by persons using parties as tools.”

“An author who speaks about their own books is almost as bad as a mother who speaks about her own children.”

“Read no history--nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.”

“What is earnest is not always true; on the contrary, error is often more earnest than truth.”

“Nothing in life is more remarkable than the unnecessary anxiety which we endure, and generally create ourselves.”

“It has been my lot to have found myself in many distant lands. I have never been in one without finding a Scotchman, and I never found a Scotchman who was not head of the poll.”

“Success is the child of audacity.”

“You asked me where I generally lived. In my workshop [i.e. in his study] in the mornings and always in the library in the evening. Books are companions even if you don’t open them.”

“What we learn from history is that we do not learn from history”

“Desperation is sometimes as powerful an inspirer as genius.”

“In politics, nothing is contemptible.”

“Everything comes if a man will only wait.”

“The best way to become acquainted with a subject is to write about it. ”

“To believe in the heroic makes heroes.”

“الحياة أقصر من ان تكون حقيره!”

“The world is weary of statesmen whom democracy has degraded into politicians.”

“Little things affect little minds.”

“The secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.”

“It destroys one's nerves to be amiable every day to the same human being.”

“Plagiarists, at least, have the merit of preservation”

“When I want to read a novel, I write one.”

“I must follow the people. Am I not their leader?”

“The European talks of progress because by the aid of a few scientific discoveries he has established a society which has mistaken comfort for civilisation.”

“I am a Conservative to preserve all that is good in our constitution, a Radical to remove all that is bad. I seek to preserve property and to respect order, and I equally decry the appeal to the passions of the many or the prejudices of the few.”

“But what minutes! Count them by sensation, and not by calendars, and each moment is a day.”

“Every woman should marry ... and no man.”

“Where knowledge ends, religion begins.”

“Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.”

“One of the hardest things in this world is to admit you are wrong. And nothing is more helpful in resolving a situation than its frank admission.”

“Man is not the creature of circumstances, circumstances are the creatures of men.”

“The canter is a cure for every evil.”

“Grief is the agony of an instant: the indulgence of grief is the blunder of life. ”

“The expected always happens”

“We are all born for love. It is the principle of existence, and its only end.”

“To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge”

“Romance has been elegantly defined as the offspring of fiction and love.”

“Wherever is found what is called a paternal government, there is found state education. It has been discovered that the best way to insure implicit obedience is to commence tyranny in the nursery.”

“He was distinguished for ignorance; for he had only one idea, and that was wrong.”

“Justice is truth in action.”

“Sir, I shall not defeat you - I shall transcend you.”

“The most dangerous strategy is to jump a chasm in two leaps.”

“A member of Parliament to Disraeli: 'Sir, you will either die on the gallows or of some unspeakable disease.'That depends, Sir,' said Disraeli, 'whether I embrace your policies or your mistress.”

“If Gladstone fell in the Thames, that would be a misfortune. But if someone fished him out again, that would be a calamity. ”

“The secret to success is constancy of purpose.”

“It is well-known what a middleman is; he is a man who bamboozles one party and plunders the other.”

“The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes.”